Help with 1989 Cherokee XJ LTD rough idle and acceleration

Hi:



I'm hoping some of you XJ fans can offer some suggestions on a problem that
just happened to me today for the first time.



First of all, the specs: 1989 Cherokee LTD (XJ), inline 6 cylinder, 4 litre,
with 150k Km's (ie: relatively low mileage, or more accurately 'kilometerage'
for the year).



I drove to Costco this morning, about a 15 km drive. Everything was fine on
the drive there but when I started the truck up to come home (1/2 hour
later), it was idling roughly and would stumble quite a bit while driving
(but it didn't stall) - it felt like it wasn't running on all cylinders. I
did make it home where I did a thorough once over of under hood wires and
hoses and couldn't see any obvious problems.



The last time I drove the jeep was about 3 weeks ago. It's rained a lot
since the so it could be that some water has got into the gas tank, but I've
lived here in Vancouver for over 20 years and the constant rain we get for 9
months of the year has never been a problem before.



My XJ has never failed to start since I purchased in new in 89, however
after it was a year old, it began to take a bit of cranking (say 20 seconds)
to get it going. It's been that way ever since. I took it to several
dealers all of who said that a bit of cranking was normal. Since it wasn't
normal when the jeep was new, I've often wondered if the CPS was faulty, but
in all the reading that I've done, a faulty CPS seems to manifest itself in
intermittent start failures and I've never had a start failure.



Anyone have any suggestions on likely candidate for the source of my
trouble? Thanks for any advice.



Regards,

Dave


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